Somewhere over the rainbow

6 year old Connie Talbot sings on Britain's Got Talent

This video was brought to my attention today by a dear friend who titled the email "if angels sound infinitely more beautiful than this, how indescribably lovely heaven must be". I hit play and I must confess, this little girl's singing brought tears to my eyes. It was the song she was singing and the way that she sung, with the freshness and purity that only truth itself possesses.

The day before, the very same friend had written to say that one of her closest friends from university had been suddenly diagnosed with acute leukemia and was undergoing emergency treatment. She asked me to pray.

Sometimes it is so easy just to coast through life, untouched by any major heartbreak. Sometimes, we can even become desensitised to the mass violence and suffering that is reported in the news on a daily basis. But when tragedy strikes close to home, where is hope to be found?

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
There's a land that I've heard of
Once in a lullaby

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves — that, though we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image.

... For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

C. S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

In the last book of the new Testament, the apostle John writes about a vision of the future that he has from God.

The New Jerusalem

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"

Revelation 21:1-5

One day, everything sad will come untrue.